Key takeaways

Staffing

Authorized and sworn officers

Authorized officer counts for the most recent year are down 104 compared to the max sworn officer count. The difference between the min and max sworn officer counts for the years 2010-2019 is 104.

Actual officer counts for the most recent year are -148 compared to the max sworn officer count. The difference between the min and max sworn officer counts for the years 2010-2019 is 148.

The actual officer count was higher than the authorized count for seven of the ten years. The overage ranged from 17 to 47 officers.

Diversity of sworn officers

There has been little to no change in diversity within the ranks of WPS sworn officers. Men are consistently in the low-to-mid 80 per cent. The proportion of indigenous and visible minority officers has also remained consistent in the 10 years.

WPS began reporting a ‘not declared’ option in 2015. Priot to that, Caucasian officers accounted for low-to-mid 80 per cent of the sworn compliment. A lack of change in the percentage of Indigenous and visible minority officers suggests the option was selected primarily by white officers.

Gender diversity

Population


Costs

Tax-supported expenses

Per capita costs

Residents per police officer


Crime

Calls and dispatched events

Violent crime

The number of violent crimes increased 21 per cent since 2015 after decreasing in the previous four years.

The clearance rate for violent crimes has been in steady decline since 2015, ending at 58.2 per cent in 2018.

Property crime

Incidents of property crimes increased dramatically from a low of approximately 21,000 in 2015 to 51,000 in 2019. This is an increase of 143 per cent in five years.

The clearance rate for property crimes has remained below 17 per cent throughout the past ten years.

CDSA crimes

Controlled Drugs and Substances Act incidents have been declining since 2011 with a small 14 per cent increase in 2017. Since 2015, CDSA incidents have decreased 30 per cent.

Clearance rates for CDSA incidents are consistently above 90 per cent.


Tables

Notes

The data has been input and compiled in a Google Sheet.

Inconsistencies in source data

  • Some officer positions are externally funded, in whole or part. Counts are inconsistently noted in the annual reports. This analysis ignores external funding.
  • 2013: WPS started using Indigenous instead of Aboriginal. Working data has been normalized to use Indigenous.
  • 2016: WPS included male/female breakdown within diversity stats but stopped in 2018. Working data does not include the gender breakdowns.
  • 2016: WPS began including cadets in civilian counts alongside a separate count of cadets. Working data calculated the difference to determine civilian staff count.
  • 2017: WPS changed reported staffing values from counts to percentages. Working data calcuates the count from the percentage. WPS stopped including separate cadet counts which are required to determine civilian staffing counts.
  • 2018: WPS continued reporting percentages instead of staffing counts.
  • 2018: WPS dropped ‘not declared’.

Civilian and cadet counts are excluded from this analysis unless the two are combined for all years.